Strategic Human Capital Insights

Client Business Plan: A Roadmap to Replace Activity with Smart Activity

 

“Successful relationship selling is not just a list of activity items.  It is a thinking person’s occupation, requiring a plan, a process with targets and smart activity, and integrated skills measured against the only metric indicator of success – The Client Business Plan.” - Joanne Flynn, “The Relationship Management Model”©


Sales and Business Development is essential to look at from a holistic perspective, starting with: 


All three must be part of a robust relationship management process that is critical for sales and business development success. Skip any of the three concepts, and you will build flaws into your business development program. All this information is absolutely necessary to develop the key management tools to monitor and measure success. It all comes together in The Client Business Plan.

Is it Activity or is it Smart Activity?

A big misconception regarding client management is that activity is the measure of sales success.  Activity is an easy metric, and today numerous apps can monitor that activity.  However, the only important activity metric is smart activity.  The only way to determine and assess smart activity is relative to an evaluation context that determines if each activity is the best use of the salesperson’s time. Only then can we truly evaluate if an activity is a smart activity. The basis of this evaluation is the Client Business Plan.


Activity and the Immediate Gratification Syndrome

Managing client relationships often has nothing to do with the number of face-to-face calls or sent emails that a salesperson makes in a week.  The real question is, relative to a specific client relationship, were the right calls made during that week that will move sales targets forward in a ‘process continues’ way?  It’s very easy for salespeople to be seduced by the activity syndrome.  We all are.  It is very satisfying and immediate gratification– like crossing off the “C” category items on a ‘To Do List.”  But how many times does undifferentiated activity lead nowhere?  If we equate activity to time, misplaced activity is a finite time resource that a salesperson:

  • Can never get back
  • Cannot reallocate to a client for whom that time would have had a meaningful impact



So What’s the Big Deal? 

It’s Competitive Warfare Out There!  That’s the Big Deal!

In a highly competitive marketplace, a salesperson must continually evaluate their use of time as a scarce resource. The use of time is a controllable factor.  All activity is not equal, and all clients are not equal.  Salespeople are in different stages with their “Portfolio of Clients” and must adjust and use their time and scarce resources wisely and appropriately.

Below are three examples of clients in different relationship phases.  Each phase requires that the salesperson engages in specific Smart Activities in the context of strategic relationship management and the client business plan.

  1. Build Phase Clients: For clients in the build phase, you will undoubtedly spend more time than you would like before you see monetary results.  It’s easy to attempt to quickly move through this cycle.  But this phase requires more time and smart activities for success.  Skip the effort you need to put into a build client and see your efforts languish or plateau before this build client ever becomes revenue-generating.

    2. Maintenance Phase Clients:
    These are the revenue-generating clients.  But don’t think they don’t require constant effort from you.  Your competition is always contacting your maintenance clients.  Never assume you are safe.  There are key maintenance smart activities that must take place to ensure you maintain this revenue-generating client. You are now the target for your competition.  Their job is to displace you.

    3. Erosion Phase Clients:
    Ignore the smart activities during the maintenance phase, and you will surely find yourself in erosion.  If you find yourself in erosion, and we all do at one time or another, there will be many key smart activities that must take place to reset the relationship back to the maintenance phase.   Sometimes erosion is obvious, but other times it is a subtle decline – often easy to miss unless you measure results against a client business plan. Ignore erosion at your own peril! 


No one said successful selling and business development was easy!


To better understand the importance of the Client Business Plan, I invite you to learn more about our 
Sales & Business Development program as part of the Phoenix Strategic Performance Institute. This program helps you strategically align your sales process to accelerate the relationship sales process, creating corporate growth and building strategic value.


Explore the Sales & Business Development Program

 

Topics: Business Development

Posted by Joanne Flynn

Joanne Flynn

Joanne T. Flynn heads up the human capital advisory group, Phoenix Strategic Performance, Inc. Previously, she was a Managing Director with Phoenix Group International and was Vice President / Director of Global Learning and Development at Goldman, Sachs for nine years. Joanne works with organizations as they face global growth and competitive challenges. She works with her clients to be both externally focused and internally responsive. With her unique background, she aligns competitive strategic efforts with related internal organizational leadership challenges. With the benefit of her career-long focus, Joanne contributes the unique insight of aligning strategy to internal organizational structure and process. She focuses on human capital relative to strategic initiatives, accelerated business growth, value creation, and business development. Joanne holds a Master of Arts degree in Business Management from the University of Oklahoma. In addition, she holds a double degree major in History and German from St. Elizabeth University, as well as certificates from a variety of leading universities and professional training and development organizations. Joanne has recently published her latest book, Accelerating Business Success, The Human Asset Management Strategy.

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